


Etched Away

by dearxalchemist



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, answered prompt, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 01:20:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7293688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearxalchemist/pseuds/dearxalchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She only has seconds to deliver a message to him before they go their separate ways. Instead of dropping the extraction coordinates, she says the three words she forced into her vocabulary. The words are in his mother tongue. </p><p> </p><p>Answered prompt:  This is kind of a prompt/kind of asking about your headcanon for the first time Gaby tells Illya she loves him in Russian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Etched Away

The crowd is thick and the sun is high overhead, making everything even hotter. Gaby can feel the sweat sliding down the column of her throat, soaking into her cotton dress as she turns her head up to the giant across the busy path from her. He stands incredibly tall among the crowd, even with his shoulders slumped, he is tall and daunting. He still manages to wear that hat and he doesn’t look hot in the slightest. She wonders vaguely if she reaches for him, if he would reach back. All those hits and near misses come flooding her thoughts, all those moments where her lips barely brushed his are still very fresh in her memory. She can still feel the texture of his sweater under her calloused fingertips and taste the coffee on his tongue from their first kiss. The crowd surges forward and Gaby knows from years of working with MI-6 now all the tell-tale signs of being watched, of being followed. The three of them are on their last mission. U.N.C.L.E. is no more after this last trip on the coast of Morocco. They’re to stop one last plan that will likely devastate the world. Solo is at a market stall not far at all, but that’s not who’s watching them. Gaby can feel the eyes of her enemy scratching down the back of her neck, they’re close and professionals, but so is she and so is Illya.

Illya must know they’re being watched. His eyes don’t quite meet hers. He looks every which way except at her. Her thoughts scream for him to look at her. She wants one last vision of those blue eyes before he is pulled away to the great Mother Russia. There is the sound of more carts being pulled out for the morning market. A man carrying what looks like a hundred pieces of rich fabric cuts between the two of them and as Gaby looks up, Illya looks down and she sees him for a brief moment. Tall, handsome, with a dark shadow cutting across his jawline. He has a new scar across the bridge of his nose and she wants to know who caused it, but they don’t have time to talk. Not here, not now.

She only has seconds to deliver a message to him before they go their separate ways. Instead of dropping the extraction coordinates, she says the three words she forced into her vocabulary. The words are in his mother tongue. They’re heavy and she says them perfectly. Gaby has had over a year of practice. Lessons with Solo, lessons with herself in the mirror – repeating the words over and over until they were burned into the tip of her tongue. She repeated them in her sleep, shouted them in her dreams, and wrote them in the fog on the mirror after a hot bath. He hears her.

She knows this because of how carefully his stance changes. His hunched shoulders instantly straighten, and his jawline ticks with a slight jump of the muscle. He looks shocked and yet there’s something else she can’t quite put her finger on, but it doesn’t matter. They are out of time. Another rush of crowd goes by and when Illya turns his blond head over, Gaby is gone.

They save the world again. Her words set off an explosion and trigger their next moves on the chessboard.

Major damage is done, the press is kept out, and the agency can end now with this last mission. Two of their top agents are gone, never recovered from an offshore explosion. No bodies, no witnesses, no transmission from U.N.C.L.E. bugs. Certificates are sent to their handlers. Waverly holds a small pearl ring in his hand at the ceremony as Solo is shipped back to the United States. Russia receives a death certificate and a few commending medals from U.N.C.L.E. all of which are buried at a small grave site North of Moscow.

The KGB salutes a fallen comrade.

Solo takes leave from the CIA to visit family. 

He winds up somewhere south of Florence, at a charming cottage with two old friends where three words changed the course of their future.


End file.
